Trouble logging in?If you can't remember your password or are having trouble logging in, you will have to reset your password. If you have trouble resetting your password (for example, if you lost access to the original email address), please do not start posting with a new account, as this is against the forum rules. If you create a temporary account, please contact us right away via Forum Support, and send us any information you can about your original account, such as the account name and any email address that may have been associated with it.

I think the lack of time jumps really shows through to which ones are the guest episodes and which ones are done by Aikawa. But really I was 1/2 and 1/2 on this since it did touch really hard on some of Aikawa's favorite story beats and I suspect what is going to be the conclusion of this show.

Very strong narrative this week, yet again dealing with theme of different people believing in different kinds of justice and what it means to protect. And thus episode explores various people and what they believe in and how each can appear good and evil in the eyes of others.

In a way this episode takes the themes from all the episodes up to this point this season and put them to good use. In the conflict presented we see all the elements of the Olympics story, of Aki's story, etc, clash together.

We see Superhumans denied their right to follow their justice and turning away from that into selfish gain instead.

We see society growing more utilitarian and letting their fear squash freedom of expression.

We also see exploration of doing the right thing for selfish reason, both in this Episode's story of Human-Man, in Raito's act of freeing the prisoners and in Kikko's obsessive pursuit over Jiro - all of them end up doing something good for others out of personal need, exploring the concept that to do heroic deeds you don't necessarily need some higher than life goal - heroism can lie in simple things too - like wanting to stay with the person you love or wanting to make your daughter care about you.

I guess if I were to sum up the main theme of this episode - its selfishness. And whether having more down to earth goals and selfish needs automatically make you "evil". In fact the very idea of heroism is flawed - without "HUMAN" part all that remains is "Super" - sometimes, striving for "only for higher purpose" is what can make you lose sight of your humanity as we are seeing with Daitetsu and have seen with the student riot at the first season finale. Hell, its what the flaw of Superhuman Bureau and Jaguar's thinking is too.

Even Jiro has a selfish need in his higher purpose Jiro believes in saving superhumans. It does not matter to him if the person is "bad" or "good" as long as what happened to him is injustice, he has a right to be saved. Yet at the same time he believes Superhuman Bureau to be inherently flawed and evil and anything that would stand against them is fair game. However we do see him slowly learn to accept that everyone has their own point of view too.

Everyone is following their own justice yet at the same time everyone is flawed in their own way and that is okay - no human is the same, no human should be identical or "conform" to predefined set of beliefs or norms. As Devilo presented last episode - right can't exist without wrong and everything has its flaws - its what completes an individual. Thus in a sense ALL justice is both right and wrong, both perfect and flawed - because each justice is perfect only for the person believing in it.

Its kind of interesting that this episode gave me a lot of Captain America: Civil War vibes, as well as Watchmen, yet this show is not more popular in Japan. The topics explored here are certainly important enough that even multi-million dollar movie industry touches upon them.

Loved how Jiro actually WAS on the evil side. I understand what he want to do, but he's being an idiot about it. Him an Raito as well. The government arrests super humans, including innocent ones, and that's wrong. But Jiro and especially Raito save and protect super humans including actual evil criminals. And that's WORSE. Hell, is Ningen-man hadn't been "born" right then, a lot of innocent people would have died, all because of stupid Raito.

Loved how Jiro actually WAS on the evil side. I understand what he want to do, but he's being an idiot about it. Him an Raito as well. The government arrests super humans, including innocent ones, and that's wrong. But Jiro and especially Raito save and protect super humans including actual evil criminals.

That happens when the government's criminalization of superhumans leaves a) only criminals as superhumans or b) forces superhumans to become criminals. I think Jack Flash and those two background characters from season 1 kind of demonstrates the process. Those last two in particular are as much as victims of circumstances and of the system.

If anything this episode really shows how the government and the system is enforcing/justifying its control by labeling superhumans as criminals, but also reducing a social problem/issue to a public health problem that can be solved with a heavyhanded technocratic solution (such as a giant robot dinosaur). And the consequences of government repression hasn't just harmed superhumans, but also regular humans (for example the relabelling of the plaza to prevent people from organizing, but also using regular humans as guinea pigs for superhuman drugs).

It's no wonder they are getting Urobuchi to write an episode, how organizations enforce obedience and order is right up his alley.

I think this episode and the timeline era is also trying to highlight the growing environmental awareness that is also occurring in Japan as greater industrialization and modernity creates their own problem. For example the arrival of invasive plant species from abroad, but also the slow realization of prior actions have impacted biodiversity as we saw with Fuurota and the bugmen that occurs in the following year.

So there's this goldenrod flower which turns people into superhumans. Where this goldenrod plant came from is another story. This plant is turning people into superhumans and many are unable to control their new powers. This episode focuses on a man who turns into hulk due to the flowers. His daughter names him Human-man because she confused "normal human" for "human-man". And human-man decides to become a superhuman fighting crime and making kids happy and stuff which surprises a lot of people since due to the current plight of superhumans, almost all stay in hiding due to fear that the police might show up to get them even if they don't do anything.

Shiba is also freeing prisoner superhumans because he used to arrest superhumans for more or less no reason and wants to make up for that.

This is a continuation of that Daitetsu episode where we see Jiro and Daitetsu of the kid squad (or whatever the name was) going against each other in the future and stuff. Jiro and Earth-chan are on the same team because Earth-chan has deemed the bureau, the police and Imperial Ads to be wrong which is something she has in common with Jiro. Their own definitions of good and bad and who should be protected and who shouldn't be still differ – those Jiro believes should be protected don't necessarily get the same treatment in Earth-chan's eyes.

The reason for human-man to become a superhuman in this day and age is because her daughter likes superhumans so it makes her happy. He doesn't care about justice or anything, all he wants is his daughter to be happy and for that he's willing to go against the government to become a "villain" to protect the goldenrod flowers. Earth-chan deems this to be wrong while Jiro thinks that he should be protected since he's doing the right things even if his intentions aren't so. Judas calls Jiro's obsession with saving superhumans a pathological condition because Jiro tends to want to save almost every superhuman he feels sorry for. He even saved No-name and that other superhuman with him even though they were criminals, although he warned them that he won't save them again, but he did save them before too.

Kikko tells Jiro that the purpose of the bureau is to protect the superhumans who aren't being used by the police/army or Imperial Ads. But since the bureau is working with two organizations who want to use superhumans, he's against the bureau. He wants freedom for superhumans and the bureau isn't help him in that. Kikko also said something like she's a witch (majou) so she can't do the right thing, which is strange since all this time she seems like she's doing the right thing. Or maybe that's why she's in the bureau. Confusing, yet intriguing.

The bug woman from the episode where Fuurota killed her also comes back as she comes out of her slumber. She'll be meeting Fuurota next year i.e 48th year.

That happens when the government's criminalization of superhumans leaves a) only criminals as superhumans or b) forces superhumans to become criminals. I think Jack Flash and those two background characters from season 1 kind of demonstrates the process. Those last two in particular are as much as victims of circumstances and of the system.

If anything this episode really shows how the government and the system is enforcing/justifying its control by labeling superhumans as criminals, but also reducing a social problem/issue to a public health problem that can be solved with a heavyhanded technocratic solution (such as a giant robot dinosaur). And the consequences of government repression hasn't just harmed superhumans, but also regular humans (for example the relabelling of the plaza to prevent people from organizing, but also using regular humans as guinea pigs for superhuman drugs).

It's no wonder they are getting Urobuchi to write an episode, how organizations enforce obedience and order is right up his alley.

I think this episode and the timeline era is also trying to highlight the growing environmental awareness that is also occurring in Japan as greater industrialization and modernity creates their own problem. For example the arrival of invasive plant species from abroad, but also the slow realization of prior actions have impacted biodiversity as we saw with Fuurota and the bugmen that occurs in the following year.

What's funny is that the said plant is viewed as okay in US. Its used for medicine and in agriculture, etc. Hell, its Kentucky's state flower.
In Japan however there was a strong backslash against it in the 70-80's with claims that it is poisonous or that it's spread is caused by radiation from hiroshima events, etc, and it was actively being destroyed as invasive plan from foreign ecosystem, which partly is reasonable since it had a negative impact on the local japanese plants like susuki. However for the country back then the fight against that plant was mainly a way to showase their anger towards US and rejection of the increasing inter-mingling of the cultures.

So its less about awareness and more about blaming outside forces for your own problems. In this case the plants were seen as an enemy because of the society's phobia of superhumans.

There's an environmental message too - government's rush to burn down the field would have killed Campe - the last of her species. Which kind of showcases how poorly planned and thought out choices of government can cause irreparable damage to nature - something that was the message of the Olympics EP too(and that one had a literal shout out to the worries about 2020 Olympic games in Japan at the end with uncertainty at what that will do to country's nature).

A strange character named Koma encased in a tomb of ice discovered in modern time. I like how the episode flashbacks to when she was around and wanting peace to her world. Kinda interesting to see her fight Jiro and the others in the present world. I think she confused them as villains. Zeth Satan sounds like a legit villain name as well.

Iron Mask Fencer's fighting outfit is pretty sick.
I think it was fairly interesting to learn more about Koma's background story and how it carries into the present.

In a way this anime really impress me, not the actions and stuffs, but the ideals and logics behind every single episodes. Every episodes have a fixed theme which is justice and evil, then it packaged in many different ways and views in every episodes.
Basically what kind of justice you have and see.

This episode, it is true that good and evil is clearly defined way back in the decades. But at the same time Koma learned that even if she go back to that time, things will still be just the same.

So this episode takes place after the return of the insect people whom Fuurota killed. And since Fuurota is feeling super guilty, he's gone missing.

Koma is from 300 hundred years ago and is frozen. Imperial Ads bought her and wants to use her to better the prime minister's reputation by having her take care of evil superhumans and then show that his ancestor did it. First target is Jiro and Koma goes to wreak havoc in Shiba's office. Koma then goes to a newly discovered temple to free an evil guy Asahi who turned good by betraying Zeth Satan and sealing him. Koma is upset that even after killing the Zeth clan and eliminating the major evil of her time, wars are still going on. So there's no point in keeping Asahi trapped in there and she should just free him so that at least she can be with the person she cares about. But Jiro convinces her to not do this while also telling her that the prime minister is a lying bastard. And she goes back to kick his butt but he tells his reason that he should manage superhumans to prevent wars and stuff. Koma leaves him but Imperial Ads doesn't and spreads the news that the prime minister is a superhuman. But why is he doing all this neko when he's a superhuman himself? This just shows that there are people who would even go against their own kind for their own personal gains. Jiro and the bureau team up again here to fight a common enemy who turns out to not be an enemy. But if she returns, on who's side will she be when Jiro and the bureau lock horns? Or will she even return?

Also, am I missing something or did they really not yet show the time when Earth-chan steals Jaguar's watch?

Also, am I missing something or did they really not yet show the time when Earth-chan steals Jaguar's watch?

She stole it in S1, during that confrontation with Daitetsu where they showed the failed masks that were based on Claudes.

Anyhow, great episode, probably one of the best this season. The parallels between Kikko and Koma are interesting, and I really feel bad for Furota now that we have more context about his situation. That line about how if Koma kills the Minister she will end up crying like Furota was surprisingly impactful to me. I like Koma's powers and design, it reminds me of a cute girl Garo or something like that.

I find it funny that while Emi and Kikko fight over Jiro all the time, it's Raito who spends most of the time with Jiro and they look to basically be roommates (I guess Jiro is freeloading with Raito). Those girls better watch out, or we might get an unexpected ending here.

Considering how the last few eps have been kinda subtly focusing on Kikko and Jiro, I kinda hope that the next one focuses on Emi, she needs the screen time.

Sounds like your typical Japanese anti-LDP conspiracy theory that the Americans or CIA has been the secret puppet masters of the LDP since post-War.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alza

The parallels between Kikko and Koma are interesting, and I really feel bad for Furota now that we have more context about his situation.

Koma isn't just a parallel to Kikko imo. She is essentially the predecessor for all these heroes and a statement that the heroes journey/duty is never over. Destroying evil won't ensure eternal peace and certainly won't guarantee emotional tranquility for the hero.

I thought the episode was pretty tense especially about how Jiro views the military in this timeline. Jonathan's background story is something I found interesting. His twisted ideals really made himself into a monster this episode imo. I feel bad for what he experienced though. It's just a damn shame that they can't solve their problems by peaceful means..